IIT Kharagpur Student Dies After Falling from Fourth Floor of Campus Building

A second-year engineering student died at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur in West Midnapore district on Thursday afternoon after falling from the fourth floor of a building on the campus.

The deceased student has been identified as Ankit Sharma, a resident of Rajasthan. He joined the institute in July last year and was enrolled in the Mechanical Engineering department.

According to police and local sources, the incident took place around 3 p.m. on Thursday at the Nalanda building on the IIT Kharagpur campus, where Sharma had a class scheduled. Security guards found him on the ground covered in blood and immediately rushed him to the campus medical facility, B.C. Roy Hospital, in critical condition. Doctors at the hospital declared him brought dead upon arrival.

Following the incident, officers from the Hijli outpost under the Kharagpur Town police station arrived at the scene to initiate an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the fall. Investigators are examining whether Sharma jumped or fell inadvertently from the fourth floor.

Additional Superintendent of Police (Kharagpur) Bushara Bano visited the campus to inspect the location. Bano confirmed that an inquiry is underway to determine the exact sequence of events leading to the fatal fall, describing it as an unusual death.

Authorities at IIT Kharagpur have not issued any official statement regarding the incident so far.

The incident follows other recent fatalities reported on the Kharagpur campus. Last month, Deepak Reddy Pullaguram, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and a resident of Hyderabad, was found dead in his campus quarters after hanging himself. In April, another student, Jaiveer Singh Dodia, died after jumping from the eighth floor of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hall. In 2025, seven students at the institute died under mysterious circumstances, five of whom were found hanging.